


Feel so paper - thin

by Anuna



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Dealing With Guilt, F/M, Friendship, Hurt and comfort, Introspection, Rebuilding the relationship, Skye struggling with her new abilities, and what that means for her identity, post 2x 10 what they become, she does understand now, skyeward secret santa exchange, some day you'll understand
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-26
Updated: 2014-12-26
Packaged: 2018-03-03 17:54:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2859740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anuna/pseuds/Anuna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Leaving won't help,” he says, his tone serious, and she is back in the cage, sitting across the man who pulled a bag off her head, telling her, all serious tone and steely eyes, that she is a kind of person who makes a mess and leaves it for someone else to clean up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Feel so paper - thin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lily1986](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lily1986/gifts).



> Written for the wonderful **lily1986** for the occasion of Skyeward secret Santa 2014. I am so sorry you had to wait, bb! I hope you enjoy your gift - I tried to make it as heartwrenching as possible (just the way you like it :D (But in all seriousness, this is all I want from the show. So I truly lucked out when I got you for my recipient, and got to write this.) Many, many thanks to **sassysnow1989** and **noprincenorape** for their generous help with this. All idiotic mistakes and typos are mine, if you find any, feel free to point them out.  <33333!!!!!

*

Skye can't actually tell when it starts. It feels like her life has been halted to a stop, reset, replayed and restarted too many times to count, but there are moments that stand out. 

One of them is this. 

She dials the number (an unknown caller doesn't stay unknown to her) and it rings three times before someone picks it up. 

“Who is this?” a woman asks. The voice is somehow strange. 

“Is Ward there?” Skye demands, but then she hears him in the background saying _who is it_ , and the moment of relief is so strong, so overwhelming, but it lasts until she gives her name. 

“It's Skye,” the woman says to him on the other side of the line; and then there's a moment while the phone is passing hands. 

Next thing Skye hears is silence. 

*

It's not the prick of the needle that bothers her so much as his calm. The way he's gentle and focused and yet detached in a way she doesn't _know_. All she would like is him to move away and leave her arm to heal on its own. 

“Sit still,” he instructs, and that tone is familiar, almost something she could lean onto. But she doesn't want it. Her mind is reeling, telling her she isn't safe, that nothing and nowhere is safe. Jemma would enter with a smile that looks like an apology, with a tray of tubes and needles, and Mack would say something about her _change_ in a hushed, concerned tone, and Fitz would look and nod in agreement. 

And Coulson would just remain silent, his face regretful but hard, and she knows. She spoke all those words herself before – an asset, a weapon, an 084.

That she would feel awful and the walls would shake. Skye thinks of the vault that used to lay beneath her feet, the secure prison out of sight and out of mind. (Almost). Not safe enough for her, not when a single memory could start the earth cracking beneath her fingertips. 

“You don't have to do that,” she says to Ward and it comes out with hostility that's completely forced, but Ward's hands don't falter. 

“Cal wouldn't be too happy if I listened to you right now,” he says. 

“You listen to Cal now?” she retaliates in a futile attempt to make her words sting. If he leaves her, then she will be a danger to nobody but herself. If anything, it's the searing pain in her chest that flares. Ward looks up at her. 

“When he's right, yes,” Ward says, almost as if they're discussing the best, most reasonable approach to a mission. Almost as if she didn't shot him – but she _did_. His anger isn't the burning, lashing out sort, but the quiet, suspended kind. She remembers. She _knows_ he is angry. And yet, she doesn't feel like he's going to wrap her arm and tell her to pack her bags and walk to the door. (But it's what she deserves.) “I called him. He's on his way,” Ward says. “How is your head?” 

“Fine, I guess.”

He regards her shortly and nods. “How about your leg?” 

Skye just sighs. She won't be walking on her own – except to the bathroom and back to her bed – for awhile now. 

Skye swallows tightly – she might be able to make the ground shake, but she's still not immune to being hit by rocks. She shrugs, not feeling up to the task of meeting his eyes, and she's not sure what she fears more – things she will see in them, or things she won't. 

“I'd suggest you stay in bed,” Ward says and leaves her. He leaves the door to the room open. She sees the light entering through the open door and hears voices – calm and hushed and remembers Agent 33. She wonders how the woman ended up with Ward, but Skye's head hurts too much and her mind is still reeling, so she sets that question aside. She just knows that the harmony of voices makes her chest hurt further, and she feels like she's ten again, alone in a room that isn't hers and will never be hers, listening to people who will never be her parents. 

Never want her. 

Poisoned tree, poisoned fruit. 

She doesn't know how or when she falls asleep. 

*

The dreams are not pretty and whatever they start like, they always end up the same – in the chamber where she freed herself from stone while her friend crumbled to dust. Only this time she wakes up with the feeling that everything around her is shaking - _the way Simmons looked at her as petri dishes started to slide off the polished metal surfaces, the way Bobbi's face changed when she realized that it was Skye causing it all_. It takes total of ten minutes for her mind to clear and her breathing to calm down. The glass of water is intact on her nightstand. There are no shouts, no panic, and the reality reasserts itself slowly with the chill of the night. 

She slips out of the bed and her trashed leg hurts. There's no crutch, nothing to aid her walk to the bathroom, which is cold with its green walls and clean mirror and shiny white sink. 

Skye splashes water on her face. She didn't kill Trip. Not with her hands, not with a gun. But if she only listened, if she only asked her father what would happen, if she calculated more; _if only_. 

The thing is, looking at a mirror is hard, and for a girl who liked how she looked, liked who she was it's just another loss on an endless list of losing. She used to think just a few months ago that even if the world started collapsing around her ears she at least had this, knew what was right, could look in the mirror and look herself in the eye. But the truth is, whenever someone told her the truth was something else, she refused to look. 

And Skye can't recognize this person. Pale, thin, with dull skin and circles under her eyes, tired of fighting and hiding and being angry. 

What she does next is almost like automatism. It's as if she's on autopilot, just following a trajectory, _copy that, understood_. Her bag is on the floor and with a pang she notices the lack of dust that's been covering it yesterday; but when she opens it, she doesn't find her knife (or spare ammo and her gun. Fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice... shame on Skye. She sighs and accepts defeat, and even if she feels her losses will never cease, here she has no right to complain here.) She keeps opening the cabinets until she stumbles upon a pair of scissors with a dull tip, same pair Ward used when he bandaged her arm. 

Skye's hand shakes. The metal is cool, smooth, and she tugs on her braid before she brings the scissors close and - 

She stares at the hair in her hand – once neat braid with strands sticking out; something that was a living part of her just a moment ago. The hair she grew for months, strands she had even back when Ward was someone she trusted. All gone with just one cut, all the care, all the hope, and the hours that passed with it, everything – just gone. 

And thing is, it should feel easier. 

It doesn't. 

Her hair – what's rest of it – hangs in a mess around her face. Skye's eyes start to prick as she looks at what she's just done – it looks awful, _hideous_ ; it feels like the last good thing about her is gone. But, maybe she can fix it, maybe she can try and cut off a little bit more, maybe if she just pretends it's what she was going for, and that she doesn't care and that's what she wanted.

The scissors clatter to the floor, and a sob rips from her throat. All she can see is the white sink filled with strands of hair, and her hands and no, this is not what she wanted; not Trip's death, not her team hurt, not the pain she's feeling, or the bullet she put in Donnie Gill. 

Not the words she said to Grant, not the bullets she put in him. 

Skye doesn't even hear the woman when she enters. All of her training – and for what? For her to feel like failure, like mess? Skye is only aware someone is there when Agent 33 touches her shoulder. Skye jerks and starts wiping her face, scrambling for shreds of dignity and feeling like she could shrink into the farthest, darkest corner of this tiny room and just disappear. It's like being six and looking at her foster mom with half of the broken mug still in her hand and knowing that she doesn't fit in. That she can't.

“I'll... I'll clean it up,” she says, reaching for the hair in the sink and remembering there's so much all over the floor, and then she bends to pick up the scissors but then she hits her head against the sink. The scissors fall to the floor and Skye with them, with pain everywhere – in her injured leg and on the side of her head, the arm that Ward stitched and it's now probably bleeding again, and that's it, isn't it? She's rotten, she's poisoned, she can't do well, no matter how hard she fights.

So she stays on the ground – it's cold, it's unyielding and maybe it will grant her the mercy and split open, and nobody will have to hurt over her any more. 

Oh but it won't. She curls in on herself and it takes a couple of moments until she registers the touch again – the other woman's expression is hard to read, but what Skye sees in her eyes isn’t cold or unkind. She just... looks, as if she's searching for something, and when she tilts Skye's face up, Skye doesn't have it in her to resist. 

“I can help,” she says, face that resembles May's but it's not. “Let me help you.”

“How? How can you help?” 

The woman indicates her hair. Skye feels like a child that wants someone to fix this, someone to take it all away, pick up the broken mug from the floor, make it all better. The woman has a name and Skye struggles to remember it, even as she lets her pull her up from the floor. Then slowly she leads Skye out of the bathroom. Skye is then numb, and it's almost pleasant as she sits near her bed and the woman gently brushes her hair out of her eyes. 

The sound of scissors, soothing and rhythmic this time, helps her even her breath. 

“What's your name?” Skye asks. 

“Kara,” the woman says. 

Skye takes a breath. Kara. That's a rather nice name, she thinks. 

“Why are you helping me?” Skye asks, remembering how the woman – Kara – didn't lower her aim the first time Skye ran into her and Ward – after. _If she tries to hurt you, I'll shoot her_. That was just yesterday. 

Kara's hands pause. Then she resumes working, just as gently as before. 

“Because you need it.”

Skye doesn't notice Ward looking at them through halfway opened door. 

*

Come next morning, the view in the mirror is somewhat more bearable. However, Skye's hair has never been like this, never this short, revealing hints of her earlobes and not even reaching down to her chin; but it's sort of a messy bob instead of just a _mess_. 

Skye also doesn't miss a cup of tea on the table. 

She hobbles towards the sound of the voices in the largest room of the house – one she supposes has multiple purposes. When she opens the door, she finds Ward and Kara inside – and her father. _Cal_ Ward is leaning against the table there, shirtless and Cal is prodding his side asking about pain and numbness and shortness of breath, and Ward dutifully answers. Skye pauses, because it's her father and Ward's scars, looking fresh and pink and barely healed even though it's been months. And when she startles they spot her, all three. Kara's face is neutral, and both Ward and her father carry different expressions of surprise; and while Cal's is mostly delight to see her and pain underneath, Ward's is already masked, that familiar look of him assessing damage.

She wants to flee. Only, her leg doesn't work. 

“Oh,” Cal says. “Your new hair.” he smiles rather insecurely, like he's not sure if he's allowed to comment on it. Then he adds, almost as an afterthought, “Daisy,” and she flinches. He seems aware he'd said something wrong, something hurtful, and he quickly goes back to what he was doing. (For the first time she starts to consider the pain he tires to hide from her.) 

Skye realizes that none of them are looking at her, and here they are, one woman she doesn't know, and two men she expected so much from. 

Skye touches her hair. Everything that used to be lush and good about her life now feels cut, and even while surrounded by people, she still feels so alone. 

*

Days blur. Days pass and it's the first time in a long time when she's doing nothing. Ward won't let her help with anything that requires physical effort (and some faraway part of her registers it as him being protective – which hurts so much, she's not able to deal with it). She spends her days sitting and observing while Cal patches people up (unknown people, “special” people, people that both SHIELD and Hydra have screwed over; just... people, suffering people), and Ward and Kara help him. Her body was already weak before she stumbled onto Ward, from wandering alone and irregular meals and not enough sleep, but now she feels like she's hit a new and unfamiliar kind of low. Her leg requires her to be still, to rest, to be really careful if she wants it to heal. There are dreams, but there are no earthquakes, and there's that at least. Kara is kind to her but Skye feels the woman doesn't trust her, and is never too far from Ward (and would protect him until her last breath.) 

Kara and Ward. Skye watches them and there's a silent sense of dread that slowly fills her. There's no place for her there. They plan missions and he talks to Kara, they discuss Cal's plan to bring in injured, and he discusses it with Kara. He doesn't feel well, and Skye sees it, but he talks about it with Kara. 

(And the thing is, this was them, once. 

Forever ago.)

For the first time in a long time, there's nothing to distract her from herself, from the image in the mirror and the leg that's slowly healing, while her heart doesn't. 

*

Cal sits next to her on the couch as she aimlessly stares at her laptop. He offers her a mug of coffee and Skye accepts it. Cal smiles, but it's brief. Just an overture to a deeper, concerned look he gives her. 

“You don't look well,” he says. Skye makes a sound, something between sigh and a resigned laugh, without any mirth whatsoever. 

“That's your professional assessment?”

“Yes. And no,” Cal says. Skye tries with a _seriously?_ type of look, but there's no real feeling behind that either. “You don't sleep well, you've lost weight, you don't show interest in anything around you... besides, we do share a roof.”

“And everyone sees it,” Skye fills in. 

“I think something's bothering you,” he offers softly and Skye feels tempted to give in. He doesn't have bad intentions, doesn't he? She'd seen him help people, she had seen him working restlessly in fact. He's eccentric and a bit clumsy, he misplaces things and he's smart. Not a monster she envisioned, in fact. (He's her father, too.) Skye doesn't know what to say to his offer, so she sighs and lets her shoulders slump, and tries to think how she should be strong, but that's so tiring and hard; and all she really wants is someone. Someone to put an arm around her. 

“Something happened,” she says, surprising herself. Cal looks up. “Something happened... in the temple.” 

He's giving her a serious look now, one she feels through her hair more than seeing it. She doesn't elaborate, she just can't – images return and Trip turning to stone, to _dust_ plays in front of her eyes again and she feels so _helpless_. Cal doesn't ask – his hand is steady on her shoulder and she shifts that much closer to him. 

“Ward said once that I'll understand,” she says, staring ahead. All she understands is this: whatever she tires fails, and whatever she touches is bound to crumble apart. Did he mean that? Despite your best intentions, everything is bound to end up wrong?

Cal is giving her a careful, probing look. “Skye,” he calls and she looks up – it's the first time he used the name she gave herself. 

“I'm a failure,” she says, not sure where it comes from. His face momentarily reflects pain. 

“Who told you that?” he asks, and she senses he is ready to jump into battle for her, protect her, and at the same time she feels so worthless. She shakes her head.

“No one,” she realizes her voice is breaking. “It's.... I tried to do good. To do right. I became a monster instead.”

Cal seems to consider carefully what he is about to say next. 

“It's not what Grant told me,” he says, and when Skye looks with a question unspoken, Cal smiles briefly. “He told me you're good with computers. That you're a fast learner and a dedicated person, if sometimes too stubborn,” he smiles wistfully. “I guess you get that from me.”

“Ward doesn't know me,” she says with conviction that sits on her chest like a stone. Because Ward thinks pure creature, a thing of goodness; someone who stands by what is right, not what is righteous – but Skye knows she failed each of his beliefs. She gave him this image of herself, didn't she? Telling him that she didn't mind the anger, acting as if pulling the trigger was right while he was on her side, convincing him that he is a good man in her eyes – but never actually seeing who said man was. 

And he was begging her to see. He was promising her to show who he really is. She decided to keep herself blind while claiming that the only truth is the one she picked. 

Cal rubs her shoulder and gives her a look that feels like echo of Ward's words she didn't want to hear back then. 

“Skye... _Daisy_... everything he told me, he told me after you shot him. He might not be happy about that, but I don't think he ever hated you for it.”

*

There's so much blood. So much blood that she thinks he is surely going to die. 

Skye can't see where exactly he's been hit, all she sees, when Kara drags him in, is blood all over her, and him, and his pale face. 

He tries to say something. He tries to say something to _her_ but words never leave his mouth. He's unconscious and now Skye is shouting for her father while the ground around them shakes. After that it's all a blur. 

*

Later, Kara tells her that the wound is non lethal, but still unpleasant. He lost lot of blood, and that has her father worried. Then she narrows her eyes. 

“The ground started shaking,” Kara says. Skye's breathing nearly stops – and when she expects fear and judgment, Kara's face is still. 

Instead of saying anything, Kara leaves, squeezing Skye's shoulder before leaving her alone. 

*

Finally, it has to end here. It feels like some kind of cosmic law she was futile trying to disobey and ignore all the while, but then, when all the stars align, leaving her exposed in harsh light before herself, Skye goes to him. 

The thing is, you are not the first person you ask for forgiveness; and it's been years since Skye has been to church. (She isn't sure it wouldn't collapse on tip of her head if she walked in. Or maybe, Skye would cause everything to collapse. She can't know, she can't predict what would happen, she can barely control seismic waves ending in her fingertips. She can't afford to stop thinking about them and just let go. )

Ward is still weak from being shot and losing so much blood. Skye can see it even as he sleeps; how his chest rises and lowers and his breath doesn't sound quite right yet. He looks pale, but he looks peaceful, and that's something that strikes her – it's a feeling completely foreign to her now. 

He wakes though, and by the time he does, she's fighting the tightening in her throat and trying to find the words to say, and everything just falls away when she meets his eyes. For all the distance he carefully kept from her ever since he stitched her wounds, the moment her eyes fill will tears he reacts. 

“Skye,” he says, carefully sitting up not to upset another shot- through wound in his side. (This really has to stop). 

“I'm so sorry,” she says, but it's barely her voice. 

“Oh Skye,” he moves, trying to find a better position to sit up, “no, please don't.”

She swallows through dry throat. What was she thinking? She doesn't have the right to come crying to him, after everything. Not after she shot him in the back, not after he offered a safe way out and she didn't listen, not after she ignored all his warnings, all the advice and information that was for her benefit and her benefit only. She has no right to seek forgiveness when she refused to give it, refused even to consider that he was trying to do something that was right.

“I'm sorry, I shouldn't have – I should go,” she says, and her sight is blurred, but before she can get up, his arm catches hers. (Save for the careful stitches he gave her, he didn't touch her ever since that day. And she remembers how he touched her. Like something precious, like someone worthy.)

“Skye,” the tone makes her wipe the tears with the back of her hand and look at him. She knows this tone, she remembers the expression; the one when he instructed her that taking a gun is a serious matter, because the world, cruel and unforgiving as it is, is a serious matter too; made of betrayal and people who failed, despite their best intentions. 

Despite wanting to be the heroes. 

She remains sitting even though she feels like she's curling into herself - _wishing that the outside world didn't exist_. Ward's hand is soft, it rubs her wrist before it lets go. 

“Leaving won't help,” he says, his tone serious, and she is back in the cage, sitting across the man who pulled a bag off her head, telling her, all serious tone and steely eyes, that she is a kind of person who makes a mess and leaves it for someone else to clean up. 

“Nothing will help, Ward,” she starts saying, and when she do the tears. Suddenly she can't stop crying, and it's the kind of sobbing that rips through the middle of her. It's the tears she kept in all this time, for the little girl who didn't have a family or a home, but a van instead; for the betrayal, and her friends, for Trip, for Donnie Gill, for Isabelle Heartley, for her father who couldn't stop calling her a name that wasn't hers. 

For everything. 

“Skye,” he tries again, gently this time, and she looks at him feeling sorrow and anger and guilt and dread; waiting for the walls around them to shake and him to look at her like Mack when he realized she is just the same as the thing that trapped him in the basement, or maybe Jemma or Fitz when they couldn't fix her; or Coulson when he told her that they need to control her abilities. To _contain_ them. And all she could wonder was if it would be like Ward and Vault D, or would it be like Donnie. Or would she turn them all to stone and dust in the end. 

Ward never looks at her like anyone else but Ward; the guy who put up with her half assed attempts of training for months, who patiently waited until she learned one thing or another, and now she understands. She understands that his _someday_ has come, and as she looks in his eyes, she feels shrinking like in front of a mirror that leaves nothing to imagination or kindness – all of her is right here, bared.

“No, you don't understand,” she says. “I ruined everything -” he looks at her almost like that's an impossible thing, and she of all people finds her words failing her. She just wants to tell him, wants to give a name to this _thing_ inside her chest but all she can come up with is repeating what she just said. “Look at me, Ward, look at me! I ruined all there was,” she says, staring at her hands and covering her mouth, and moving her limp and lifeless hair away from her face. And then, “God, I am hideous,” she says, and means it in more ways than one. 

That's when he moves forward to pull her close, warm and strong and sure. When her cheek meets his chest, something between sob and scream rips from her chest, and she's telling him everything, everything about being seven and alone in a cold room, about not getting gifts for Christmas, about Trip crumbling away before her eyes. About being stupid and arrogant and trying to hate him, and being sorry, and him and Kara and cutting her own hair because she wanted her outside to fit her inside. 

“I'm hideous,” she says, parting from his chest. He looks at her, deeply and honestly and says, 

“You're _not_ ,” moving the hair away from her heated face. 

“Look what I did,” she says, and he warmly answers

“It will grown back,” and kisses her forehead. 

In that moment she feels her chest will crack open, and she starts to tremble, like an earthquake of its own, but his lips remain. He kisses her again, and again, her hairline and her wet cheek and pulls her close again, and she _knows_. Without asking, without every saying it, she knows she's forgiven and welcome; she is wanted and needed and safe. And this man whose love she didn't want – whom she thought of as a monster – is the one who looks at her and _sees_ her; without judging or pretense. Without the need to control her, because it's not the outside control that she needs. And suddenly it's clear how and why. 

“It's nothing that couldn't be fixed,” he says, and she knows he's not talking about her hair. He _knows_. He's been here, right here, all those months in the basement, in darkness, trying to take his own life. With a shaking hand she reaches for his, turning it so she could see his wrist. And she wants to kiss it, but after all she's done? 

_You're telling me you've been lying to everyone.. about everything? But your feelings for me are real?”_

Her own words ring in her head when she presses her face against his wrist. 

“Skye,” he says, and this time he sounds like he's in pain. He takes her face in his hands and shakes his head – all of the anger he has every right to after her lectures about right and wrong and Hydra and SHIELD – all of it is just gone. “Don't do this to yourself,” he says. 

“Only God can forgive,” she repeats when May's words suddenly ring in her mind. “But he won't.” 

“Skye,” he sighs and kisses her forehead again. “It's not God who has the problem with forgiving.” She tried to convince herself so hard that she had him all figured out – a spineless coward, backstabbing and evil, while she was good and right and pure. (She _should never_ love someone like that). But in reality he _is_ the one who is older and wiser. She might have missed Christmases and gifts, but he had been denied the right to exist by the very people who should have loved him. The world had left her slightly bent, but it had downright broken him. “I'm not angry with you,” he says, soothing and slow. “I promised you I won't turn my back on you. And I won't. I will never let you suffer. I just can't let you hurt me again.” 

She nods and tears start again. It feels like she will never, ever be done crying. 

He gently wipes them away, again, and again and again. 

“I was wrong and I am sorry. Oh Ward, _I am so sorry_.”

“I know,” he says. He pulls her close again, to kiss her forehead, her eyelids, her lips. 

The third kiss she returns, shakily at first, and then with longing and grief and need. He slows her down, until it's just a gentle caress of lips, the kind that won't go away. 

“Let's get some rest,” he says and pulls her down to bed with him. She still wants to tell him so many things, about the earthquakes and her fear and how _good_ it felt breaking free from the stone. How much she hates that she liked it. His kisses shush her and he promises that they have the time – and wounds to heal, she reminds herself – and before she knows, she closes her eyes against the steady beat of his heart. 

Finally, she _sleeps_.


End file.
